The social lives of mass-produced images of the 1935–41 Italo-Ethiopian War

Bibliographic Data

ID12536310
AuthorsMarkus Wurzer (0000-0002-4873-4236, Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, corresponding author)
Year2022
Volume27
Issue4
Pages351-373
Publication date2022-11-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueModern Italy (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1353-2944 • E-ISSN: 1469-9877
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/mit.2022.33
OpenAlexW4308886664
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited3

For the last 20 years, research on European colonialism has addressed private photo collections. Prior to that, interest was focused specifically on propaganda photography. In the hope that privately kept material could offer new, more ‘authentic’ insights into colonial everyday life, researchers have so far mostly ignored the mass-produced images which are often part of such private collections, too. But especially when the question arises of how mass-produced images functioned as consensus-building tools, of what impact they had on the ground, they seem to be a promising source. Therefore, this paper on mass-produced images of the 1935–41 Italo-Ethiopian War in private photography collections probes how ‘ordinary’ soldiers used images, what meanings they created in the process, and, thereby, how they positioned themselves relative to the Fascist regime's dominant colonial discourse. This article answers these questions by drawing on the private collections of four so-called ‘ allogeni ’, German-speaking Italian citizens from the province of Bozen/Bolzano, who took part in the 1935–41 Italo-Ethiopian War

Archaeology · Art · Colonialism · German · Media studies · Photography · Political science · Sociology · Visual arts · World War II · European history and politics · History · Italian Fascism and Post-war Society · Law

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